


impulse, instinct

by charcoalsuns



Series: Daichi Rarepair Week 2017 [3]
Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Gen, canon compliant past season three, character exploration
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-16
Updated: 2017-02-16
Packaged: 2018-09-24 16:15:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,928
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9769895
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/charcoalsuns/pseuds/charcoalsuns
Summary: Kurokawa does not always act on either. But there is more than one way to keep a level head, and more than one way to treat an unpromising goal.(day 5: dreams)





	

**Author's Note:**

> Title from Haikyuu's second s2 opening, specifically the line where the animation focuses on Daichi. Still green, perhaps, but growing nonetheless ;-;

 

 

Kurokawa is a month from entering his third year at Hisa when he happens across the television channel broadcasting the quarterfinal matches from Spring High.

It's a quiet weekend. His homework complete, he's just sat down with a steaming cup of tea and a plate of chocolate cookies, folding his legs beneath the _kotatsu_ for additional warmth.

Both stay where he'd placed them on top of the table, stay as still as he is, his eyes fixed to the screen.

Movements faster than he can spot their causes.

Reactions in the split second it takes to step forward, leap sideways, to raise outstretched arms.

Attacks becoming saves becoming attacks again, unpredictable and captivating.

His tea is long cold when he realizes his mouth is dry. It's not the first time a match has drawn his attention – he plays as well, after all – but it's the first time he really understands that there is much more _playing_ he could do.

He wants to go there.

He finds out what he can about the high schools nearby, the choices he has. One name stands out to him among the spread of information pamphlets on his desk: _Karasuno_ , home of a team he hadn't gotten to see, but the team from this prefecture who had been in that stadium, too.

In his mind, he lets the goal take form. The courts of Tokyo are almost realer than a dream, because he'd watched them while awake, even if they hadn't happened around him; and when the time comes to choose the schools whose entrance exams he'll take, Karasuno is the first one he sits for, the first one he hears back from, the first one he accepts.

 

 

 

There is no coach for the volleyball team.

He wasn't the only one influenced by the bright intensity of a nationally televised match; he isn't the only first year standing here, hopeful, set on achieving that honor again.

Not by a long shot – and it would take the longest shot of all to reach a height not one year past.

Kurokawa hadn't considered that _this_ would be waiting for him here, a gymnasium filled with all the wrong tones of yells, with artificial light like any other indoor room in the country, with more people walking back out than in.

As decisive as a seal on an envelope, a latch on a door, he realizes there is so much playing he won't be able to do.

He isn't going to question, or quit, or stop working to improve. But there's only so far that staying can take him, and he doesn't want to let hope rise when it will surely vanish just as soon, like steam from a cup of tea, left to grow cold.

 

 

 

Even in a small town like theirs, news apparently takes a long time to spread – or it spreads, but takes a long time to sink in. There is a sort of stubbornness that exists here, in the people who call this place home.

On the first day of Kurokawa's second year at Karasuno, he meets a boy whose stubbornness takes the form of bright, intense eyes, and high hopes that seem ignorant of the empty gymnasium around them.

As it is, he doesn't _meet_ him, exactly. Kurokawa listens to their three introductions, wondering vaguely at the fact that it'd been himself standing there not too long ago, then walks off to practice on his own. He wants to stay in this game more than he wants to consider leaving, but not so much as to try out of his way to make friends. Giving the answers he knows, though, is not beyond him, even if he doesn't stick around to watch their faces fall; even if it stings more than he cares to admit to tell them the truth of their situation, that their hopes are a long, insurmountable stretch from the present. That there is only so much they can do, and it won't be enough.

It will be easier for them if they know, too, he thinks, and hopes himself that they won't be too let down.

 

 

 

It seems: they refuse to be let down. The part of Kurokawa that keeps his old dream safe, as if he might yet take it out again, feels the smallest stir beneath his skin at their wide-eyed, endearing requests. He still doesn't really talk to them – to anyone, for that matter – but he watches them on occasion, as if by watching, he might yet learn a different truth.

Sawamura has something at his core that is kinder, more accessible than stubbornness. He leads the other two without needing to call for their attention, and they grow in their own confidence, a little surer each day they ask to stay for longer after practice.

On the day Sawamura first manages to catch one of Kurokawa's spikes, they cheer out loud from their own places across the court. They might have felt too new, too shy to do so only weeks ago, and the brief sound of their voices settles nonetheless in Kurokawa's consideration of this fading team. None of them talk about what happened less than three years ago, about the faceless ones who fought their way far beyond these same walls. But it's in their late practices, their attempts at new techniques; it's in the way Sawamura picks himself back up when he's knocked over by a bullet of a trajectory – they haven't forgotten at all.

He still watches Kurokawa like his prowess in middle school means much of anything now. He still lights up like nothing else when Kurokawa nods a silent _Good work_ to him on his way out through the gymnasium doors. He still thinks resurrection is possible.

"They're doing well, aren't they?" Tashiro says to him during an overlapping water break. His smile has dimmed, and Kurokawa, seeing the same potential, the same absence of guidance, can determine why. He does not covet the only leadership role this team has left, however he might know it is likely his, soon enough.

He nods, letting the fine print go unsaid.

 

 

 

Without practice matches to take part in, they hadn't unpacked any of their uniforms from the cardboard boxes in the clubroom.

With a week until the Inter-high preliminaries, it is finally necessary.

For once, Sawamura doesn't put up a polite fight about leaving practice behind, and goes willingly with Kurokawa to find and unpack and sort, and to bring those they'll need to be cleaned.

Tucked behind a crate of deflated volleyballs, in a battered, unlabeled box, Kurokawa finds a heavy length of black cloth. He knows what it is. As a first year the previous year, it had fallen to him and his peers to clear out the storage room in the gym when the volleyball club's equipment had been deemed to take up too much space, and he recognizes the barely worn grommets; the stark white paint, though he can't make out any full characters with the banner stuffed into its own folds, lying still among smudged trophies.

He covers the box with a pile of practice jerseys, glad Sawamura is facing the other way.

He doesn't try to break their dreams; doesn't want to cause them hurt, but neither does he want to lead them onward, to a fall that will feel all the more miserable for having thought they could fly.

 

 

 

For a month the following summer, Kurokawa gets himself caught up again.

It is definitively more real than a dream, to have the great coach Ukai in the gymnasium where they practice, now, and with the way he leads them, not an ounce of kindness in his incongruously tough frame nor a moment's mercy for any of their mistakes – it seems possible again, if in a future further than the time Kurokawa has left, that Karasuno could be led to a court worth watching.

After a month that fortuitous summer, Kurokawa catches himself, still hoping.

 

 

 

He tries to keep the team going, after they're left on their own once more, but old habits are hard to break; old dreams difficult to recover.

He tries at emulating Ukai's command, but the part of Kurokawa that had washed bitterness down until it mostly diffused into acceptance is the most prominent part of him, after all, and he won't be around for much longer. It won't be enough, for him to attempt buckling down on them now.

Sawamura has a kindness to his core that makes him much more approachable than Kurokawa ever is, and despite any number of warnings, any amount of prior knowledge of how this would go, Kurokawa cannot seem to stop himself from feeling a faint whisper of regret, that the club couldn't have turned out how they'd once hoped.

The way futility makes lines of Sawamura's toughening skin whispers to him, too. So he tries to pass on what he knows will work, instead of only what he knows will not. He tries to lead his team forward, though the motions still feel absent of passion, of possibility, and thinks that when the time comes, they might fill in the rest.

It's a quiet weekday when they lose, eliminated decisively by a team who is later eliminated in turn.

Kurokawa doesn't cry. He doesn't so much as lower his head. Not as he walks from the court for the last time, not when he leads the team to line up before emptying stands. Not on the bus ride back, when he sits on his own a seat behind their faculty advisor, bag heavy at his feet. If he raises his eyes to the mirror, he can see the first and second years behind him, silent, faces clenched in either frustration or distress.

Taking in the hard set of Sawamura's jaw, the unblinking glint in his drying eyes that's reflected in those around him, Kurokawa expects it's the former. Distress means a helping of panic, and there is nothing further from the truth he sees behind him.

There is no way for Kurokawa to know what will happen when he no longer spends time in that gymnasium with them. He doesn't expect to see these club members again once he retires. But the part of him that is comprised of mostly acceptance has tried too long to wash away his disappointment, his bitterness at arriving too late—

That part of him reserves a breath of hope for them, instead.

 

 

 

"Thank you very much for everything!" he shouts, and the rest of his team follows.

Kurokawa nods, replies, "Yeah." There isn't anything else he can offer.

Sawamura wears responsibility like it's embedded in his skin, inseparable from the rest of him. It isn't something that anyone could point out, just the fact of his reassuring presence, his confident, confiding voice; just the fact of watching him struggle to his feet, too, as often as any of them.

Kurokawa doesn't think he'd done much himself, wearing the old team jersey underlined with a captain's mark. He doesn't think much of any of the passing choices that led him to stand at the forefront of Karasuno, then at the door between this gym and the rest of the day. But without discounting the easy stability he'd maintained while responsibility had been placed with him, without considering regret, Kurokawa looks to these faces who have never seemed to accept stagnancy as a reality.

He looks for the last time, and when he steps away into the bright summer outside, he leaves his dream behind.

 

 

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

 

On the floor of Kurokawa's closet, his indoor trainers stay in their dust bag.

A year later, he still uses them sometimes, when the municipal team has a meetup, but the atmosphere of that borrowed gymnasium is entirely different from the one filtered through his memory; he welcomes the change of pace, his focus now fixed on something more practical, more attainable.

He had never let himself fall behind in his studies, and his management is even more valuable now, as he balances classes with shifts with schoolwork, with time he finds left for himself. Eyes forward, he settles into a routine as self-sufficient as he can keep it.

Sometimes, on quiet nights – though most of his nights are quiet, these days – he spends a few thoughts to wonder about the place he retired from. Only a few thoughts. Only a few stirring beats beneath his skin, toward a handful of faces he cannot quite remember; then, the moment passes, and he is again only aware of what he can see is real around him.

 

 

 

It is two months from the new year when Kurokawa happens across an article in the local newspaper, broadcasting a result of the preliminary matches for Spring High.

His tea goes cold in the amount of time he spends thinking, wondering about this team, resurrected in print.

There are scores listed, and names, and a rough photograph. All confirm what he initially expects is a stumble between sight and comprehension.

But contrary to what he's believed of himself, he can remember what he once felt, even when his mind's eye seems to blink at all the relevant images, and he can remember what he once thought – that hope, in their hands, might be worth keeping.

Kurokawa centers the article before the camera on the back of his phone. He makes sure to capture the last sentence, which reports on the date and location of their next tournament.

He has never used the number Tashiro exchanged with all of them back when he was captain; it had been meant for matters of urgency.

He sends the picture, and nothing else.

 

 

 

It takes over half an hour just to find their space in the stands. Not for lack of direction, as there are signs pointing them in every one, but for lack of space to move. It seems as if the entire population of Miyagi could fit in this building, and they wouldn't even have to stand as close as is needed at present.

But the only people here from Miyagi are two teams, nearly invisible in the parade that precedes the tournament's start, and their supporters, likely inaudible from the courts.

The sound of _Karasuno High School_ over every loudspeaker in the stadium echoes through Kurokawa's bones.

He has never been so aware of gravity as he is right now, feet rooted to the balcony floor like the soles of his shoes don’t exist, hands cold and unsteady around the railing that is the only thing separating him from a ten-meter fall. He cannot imagine how they feel themselves, when they are even more immersed than he is in this incredible place they've reached.

His heart is pounding, and he is utterly awake.

 

 

 

There is a coach for their volleyball team. Kurokawa has the tournament brochure rolled into a pocket, and he turns the name over, summer brewing in the back of his mind.

It's not all they have going for them, not by a long shot.

Beyond the small section of Karasuno supporters, he can hear people in the stands exclaiming over improbable strength on both sides, and being momentarily stunned by an attack faster than voiced denial. Beside him, Tashiro sucks in his breath at every falter, every save, following each up with what sounds rather like a sniffle. Kurokawa doesn't turn to check.

He once played as well, after all – but it was never like this. He could never have walked away from this. But he had never walked _toward_ it, to begin with, and while the truth of this situation sets in, while he watches the movements and reactions of a group of people who have never looked away without coming back, he understands: it was only ever a dream for him. For them, it was a reality.

It _is_ a reality, and Kurokawa uses all the focus he can summon to give the attention it calls for. He remembers how quickly the game had moved from the court itself, knows he can only see some things clearly because of his current vantage point.

He remembers how he'd worked at improving on both sides of an attack, and knows how skilled a player in position for both offense and defense would need to make themselves.

He watches as Sawamura shifts in a split second, in reaction to the opponent's form. When the spike goes back up, it seems like he was waiting for it to come to him; when he picks up a bullet of a serve, he is barely pushed from his feet at all.

It is almost comical, for Kurokawa to think back to the sight of him through the net, closing his arms around a ball and dropping it in prompt surprise.

It would take something noteworthy for him to drop the ball now.

The match overlaps strangely in Kurokawa's mind, as all the faces he could not fully remember pull off feats he could never have imagined. He does not reminisce, not as a conscious action. But he cannot help but recall the past they had shared, all the more to look on the present with, all the more to be struck by.

Hanging from the railing is a banner he recognizes. Pitch black; wing black. He cannot see its message from where he stands, but he knows it is true.

All around him, the swell of sound pressing through his skin.

From the court, the voice of their captain, keeping their hopes alive.

Kurokawa watches, and wants nothing more.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> /lets out a breath, this week is taking a lot out of me ;;;
> 
> Thank you for reading!


End file.
